Merged Topic - Historical Reliability of the Gospels

[Randy Carson]

sure….sure…..and yet the creator of the entire universe, knowledgeable about the laws of all physics was stymied by a woman's period…LOLOLOL…yer a smart one all right. And yet you think that a god as great as yours could not even convince the jews when he actually showed himself to them and did all these miracles for them that he could not convince them……granted it was always the third time he was successful…LOLOLOL…what a god.

And if God had simply forced people to bow down before him against their will, would you have respected him the more for it?

[Randy Carson]

Oh, and the whole book of Revelations?  Must be all undisputed FACT except the parts that don't make a lick of sense which by the way is nearly all of it..
But hey, even back then people swallowed substances that caused hallucinations..

So, it doesn't make sense to YOU? Or to anyone?

[Randy Carson]

Truly I say to you, this generation shall not pass before all these things come true...somewhere in matthew....

Yeah.....the NT is accurate..LOLOL... what a pos of a god you splay yourself to at least you could worship Odin, he promised no ice giants and we don't see none of those fuckers eh? WHO-HOO go ODIN!!

Man, if you are representative of the atheist intellectual elite...

[Randy Carson]

You are making the mistake of confusing sincerity with agreement with you. 

Oh, hell no. I'm not naive, Mike. We can disagree with one another while sincerely trying to understand our differences. Or we can interact like chuckleheads...aitm-style.

I think you'd prefer the former, yes?

I have not told you one lie about what I think about anything.  I am sincere about my thinking, reasoning--and even my beliefs.  But that really means little.  Hitler was sincere as well.  So what?  I base my thinking, not on the sincerity of my thinking, but the accuracy of that thinking.  It would serve you well to do the same.

You'll get nothing but my honest, best efforts, Mike. I promise.

[reasonist]

Does that make sense, drunkenshoe? Do I need to slow down even more for you?

That's exactly the arrogance that lacks credibility. So until now I tried to reply with at least some decorum and decency, but that doesn't work with people who live in a bubble of (self) deceit. What clearly shows ignorance is that you," Ben" Carson' think you can fool anybody here and convince us that your fairy tales are real. The only one you are fooling is yourself. The sooner you realize that the sooner you can get on with your pathetic life. Where you are now in your life, most of us here were in the past. We grew, matured and left superstition behind us. Obviously you are not there yet, or never will be. But to think that you can come here and spread your bullshit as facts is more than ironic. It must be a bigger challenge than to post on a religious forum where all agree with your nonsense.
You have absolutely nothing to contribute to a rational discussion. Your so called facts are bronze age mythologies and fairy tales. To try to change that into testable, provable and disprovable facts is as ridiculous as your diatribes here.

[widdershins]

Fair enough, Mike. But what is the standard in a court of law? Proof beyond ALL doubt? Or beyond reasonable doubt? It is the latter, and juries are cautioned against speculation of what MIGHT have happened. We have four independent eyewitness accounts of the resurrection.

It always amuses me how believers in any sort of nuttery always want to use the example of our court systems to show how their particular flavor of nuttery is accurate by the standards of our court.

History is not a court of law.  Science does not use the same standards as our court systems.  And if it did, science would quickly become a whole lot less useful.  Do you know how many innocent people are behind bars?  Do you know how many guilty people get off on technicalities?  Are you aware that the way our court systems are set up the "facts" of any given case take a DISTANT SECOND to who is better at arguing?  Why do you think it's so expensive to get a good lawyer?  Will a good lawyer bring better facts to the court room?  No.  A good lawyer is simply better at arguing, better at twisting reality, better at distorting the facts to get the outcome he wants.  There is a reason science isn't modeled after our court system, much as you might wish it were.

As we have firmly established prior to this, you have NO eyewitness accounts until you can convince a great majority (95% is the standard) of scholars and historians that you do.  And not only have they not been convinced that you are right, they HAVE been convinced that you are wrong.  YOU HAVE NO EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS!

And that's the second most popular thing that believers in various nuttery want to use, eyewitness accounts.  Because if someone claims they saw something then it's true without fail, right?  Just ask David Koresh!  Hey, a couple of years ago I read an eyewitness account from a doctor in India who said, FOR THE SECOND TIME IN HIS CAREER, that he confirmed some magic guy there had not eaten or drank anything for about 40 years!  That's not only an eyewitness account, that's an eyewitness account from a PROFESSIONAL!  That guy knows what he's talking about, so magic MUST be real!  And Trickle-Down Economics works, too!  There are LOTS of Republican eyewitness accounts to attest to that!  Step one, give rich people more money.  Step two, ?????  Step three, PROFIT!

[Randy Carson]

Okay, define "accurate".  It seems like you are trying to prove the text is "accurate", meaning, "It is relatively unchanged for its original intent" to show that it is "accurate", meaning, "Every word is true".  That's the impression I'm getting, though, admittedly, I have not read and will not read 4 walls of text you ripped from a source I would never go to on my own.

First, that was mostly my own writing, but I do understand there was a lot of it. The challenge, widdershins, is that you can ask a one-line question that might take a volume to answer ADEQUATELY. I'm trying to provide information that folks need to evaluate the claims of Christianity objectively, and that can be wordy. Sorry...just skip over those parts. We can always refer back to them now that they are posted if we need to do so.

Let's say for a moment that you have just proved that the text of the Bible is an accurate depiction of the original intent (you have not and you cannot, you are, instead, trying to invoke the principals of probability to prove an absolute, which will never happen, even if the probability you used were not skewed horribly).

But don't dismiss this so lightly! EVERYTHING we know from antiquity is a matter of probability, and the accuracy of the NT texts has no peer in all of ancient literature.

Now, why is the accuracy of the NT text such a big deal? Well, if we're going to ask people to consider the message of the gospel, it's only fair that we be able to explain how we even know with confidence what the gospel is!

And as a sidebar, one of the rabbit trails that folks in forums like this love to run down these days is the silly notion that Jesus never existed. But another is the idea that the Bible has been corrupted over time the way that the original message in the children's "Telephone Game" gets corrupted. So, that issue needs to be addressed right up front.

But let's say you just showed us that the text, as it is today, is substantially similar to the text as it was written.  So what?  How does that prove that magic is real?  How does that prove that it is anything but a collection of fantastical magical stories with no basis in reality?

Good questions. As I pointed out previously, having an accurate copy (or even the autograph) of Alice in Wonderland would not be sufficient to convince you of the existence of the Cheshire Cat, would it?

But the Case for Christianity is like a cold-case murder. Cold-cases exist when all of the witnesses to a murder have died (if a witness were still alive, it wouldn't be cold!). Usually, there is little forensic evidence from the original invesigation that took place many years earlier.

Sound familiar? The case for Christianity has no living eyewitnesses. There is no forensic evidence. But there are eyewitness accounts and other records that we can examine to build a case upon indirect or circumstantial evidence.

The case does not have to be proved beyond ALL doubt, widdershins. It has to be proved beyond all REASONABLE doubt. I think this is possible. Lots of people do.

What I'm not entirely convinced of is whether everyone in the jury box has heard the evidence presented well...in a compelling and logical manner.

That's what I'm trying to do.

You can rewrite history all you want by quoting all the fringe nuts who disagree with the preponderance of evidence which has convinced a vast majority of scholars until you're blue in the face.  It still doesn't prove Jesus went to Hogwarts.

No, He didn't. But He did go to the cross.

And what happened after that is what we really need to examine.

[Randy Carson]

That's exactly the arrogance that lacks credibility. So until now I tried to reply with at least some decorum and decency, but that doesn't work with people who live in a bubble of (self) deceit. What clearly shows ignorance is that you," Ben" Carson' think you can fool anybody here and convince us that your fairy tales are real. The only one you are fooling is yourself. The sooner you realize that the sooner you can get on with your pathetic life. Where you are now in your life, most of us here were in the past. We grew, matured and left superstition behind us. Obviously you are not there yet, or never will be. But to think that you can come here and spread your bullshit as facts is more than ironic. It must be a bigger challenge than to post on a religious forum where all agree with your nonsense.
You have absolutely nothing to contribute to a rational discussion. Your so called facts are bronze age mythologies and fairy tales. To try to change that into testable, provable and disprovable facts is as ridiculous as your diatribes here.

Oh. So when other people throw all sorts of crap at me, that's okay. But when I respond in kind, then I lack credibility. I see how it is.

And seriously, reasonist..."bronze age mythologies and fairy tales" are just assertions without evidence. Try to back up your claims with something substantive.

[reasonist]

Actually posters here were polite to you when you started to come here and spread your infantile garbage. You were welcomed until YOU introduced rudeness and arrogance.

And seriously, reasonist..."bronze age mythologies and fairy tales" are just assertions without evidence. Try to back up your claims with something substantive.


LOL! Still trying to reverse the burden of proof. But yes, claiming miracles is mythology and superstition. I don't have to back that up because it's self evident.

[reasonist]

The prophet Mohammad ascended to heaven on a winged horse...1.5 billion people actually believe that. Does that make it true? Of course not, it's the same mythological fable as the resurrection from the dead or healing the sick (not amputees!).
Do christians believe in any of the other 1,000 or so gods from Amun to Vulcan? I guess not and that makes them Atheists. We narrowed down the sky daddies to only a handful, a few more to go. Atheists are the fastest growing group in the US. Europe has accomplished that to a great degree. It's called evolution. We change for the better with more information coming out every day from science, so we don't need false consolation anymore.
It all depends on social conditioning. If Sir Carson would have been born in Baghdad or Riyadh, he certainly wouldn't worship Jesus (otherwise he would be decapitated for blasphemy). That alone makes religion irrelevant. If the truth depends on geographical location, it is completely worthless. Only a universal truth can be accepted and believed.

[SGOS]

And as a sidebar, one of the rabbit trails that folks in forums like this love to run down these days is the silly notion that Jesus never existed.

The topic does come up quite often, but the issue remains unresolved for lack of evidence.  Some atheists believe a Jesus never existed, and they even give reasons for their belief.  That's fine, but lets remember what people believe doesn't really matter.  This is also true in your case.  A preponderance of flimsy evidence, is still flimsy.

But no matter what atheists believe or don't believe, most of us here will agree that the debate is irrelevant.  Jesus' existence is of no import.  It's more about the need to prove the truth of magic and superstition as claimed in the Bible, and that also remains unresolved because no one has been able to do it.

But another is the idea that the Bible has been corrupted over time the way that the original message in the children's "Telephone Game" gets corrupted. So, that issue needs to be addressed right up front.

Again, how much the Bible has changed since the first ancient texts were first written is irrelevant.  This has been adequately pointed out by others here.  You should stop wasting our time.  The original texts, were written by the original superstitious and unscientific flim flam men, and their flim flam doesn't become more valuable because a bunch of scribes meticulously copied their bullshit with great precision.

The case does not have to be proved beyond ALL doubt, widdershins. It has to be proved beyond all REASONABLE doubt. I think this is possible. Lots of people do.

What I'm not entirely convinced of is whether everyone in the jury box has heard the evidence presented well...in a compelling and logical manner.

That's what I'm trying to do.

This could be very insulting if anyone here were taking you seriously.  The question of God's existence can be seen as of ultimate importance, even by atheists.  Because if it's true, it has the ultimate implications for all of us.  You think we just blew off a question that important, without looking at it as close as you do?  We have looked at the question.  We just evaluate the evidence much more critically than you do.

You are not the first theist to have come here with what he thinks is "the evidence presented well...in a compelling and logical manner," in a format far more clear and concise than your forebears, and that we are incapable fools who blind ourselves to the truth.

Get over yourself.

[widdershins]

First, that was mostly my own writing, but I do understand there was a lot of it. The challenge, widdershins, is that you can ask a one-line question that might take a volume to answer ADEQUATELY. I'm trying to provide information that folks need to evaluate the claims of Christianity objectively, and that can be wordy. Sorry...just skip over those parts. We can always refer back to them now that they are posted if we need to do so.

If you have such valuable "information" then take it to historians, not to the public, and show them how very right you are.  Why don't you do that?  Why don't the people you get your information from do that?  Because the conversation won't go the way you want it to when you're talking to people who know more about the subject than you do.  But, that's kind of how it's going here, too.

But don't dismiss this so lightly! EVERYTHING we know from antiquity is a matter of probability, and the accuracy of the NT texts has no peer in all of ancient literature.

I dismiss it lightly because experts did.  I don't want, have the time or have the money to waste to learn what they know just to satisfy my curiosity and, if I did, this would be the LAST subject I would waste my limited resources on.  I would rather learn advanced mathematics or particle physics or advanced computer programming concepts than to study ancient magics.  Why?  Because the "probability" that magic is real is very, VERY low.  And I hate to break it to you, but the only real difference between Biblical texts and other ancient texts is people still believe in them.  Why that is really isn't much of a mystery.  Once Christianity gained traction ancient Christians set about on a campaign of slaughter and forced conversions, relating the worship of any other deity to the worship of their specific anti-diety, Satan, giving them an excuse to torture, maim and kill any who disagreed with them.  And when they weren't converting by force, they were converting by assimilation.  Find a SINGLE Christian holiday with no ties to ancient pagan holidays.  Good luck with that.  Christianity invented holidays to correspond with pagan holidays so that pagans could convert without giving up their celebrations.

Now, why is the accuracy of the NT text such a big deal? Well, if we're going to ask people to consider the message of the gospel, it's only fair that we be able to explain how we even know with confidence what the gospel is!

Yeah, the problem is that you keep inventing an "accuracy" which just doesn't exist, according to historians and scholars, AKA, "People who know what they're talking about".  Why should I believe you over them?  I can tell you why I should NOT believe you over them.  You're not trained, you haven't studied ANY of the actual documents in question, you get your information from whatever source agrees with you, you came to your conclusions BEFORE you started looking into it and, thus, you only look at information which supports your conclusion and ignore any information which does not.  So why should I bother reading your "information"?  Garbage in, garbage out.

And as a sidebar, one of the rabbit trails that folks in forums like this love to run down these days is the silly notion that Jesus never existed. But another is the idea that the Bible has been corrupted over time the way that the original message in the children's "Telephone Game" gets corrupted. So, that issue needs to be addressed right up front.

There is not a lot of "historical" evidence to suggest that Jesus ever did exist (and before you say it, any book that talks about the magical powers of Jesus does not qualify as a "historical" document).  He MAY HAVE existed.  But there is certainly no evidence to prove this is true, and there is ABSOLUTELY no evidence to show he was Harry Potter.

And yes, the Bible HAS BEEN corrupted over time.  There is plenty of evidence that historical events were added after the fact, and that is not coming from atheists.  That is coming from historians and scholars, some of whom are actually believers.  There is also plenty of evidence to suggest that your "other sources" of evidence that Jesus existed, aside from the Bible, have also been tampered with after the fact.  In fact, some are PROVED to have been tampered with by the church itself.  Lie to me ONCE and I can say with absolute certainty that you are no follower of a perfect being.

Good questions. As I pointed out previously, having an accurate copy (or even the autograph) of Alice in Wonderland would not be sufficient to convince you of the existence of the Cheshire Cat, would it?

But the Case for Christianity is like a cold-case murder. Cold-cases exist when all of the witnesses to a murder have died (if a witness were still alive, it wouldn't be cold!). Usually, there is little forensic evidence from the original invesigation that took place many years earlier.

Sound familiar? The case for Christianity has no living eyewitnesses. There is no forensic evidence. But there are eyewitness accounts and other records that we can examine to build a case upon indirect or circumstantial evidence.

The case does not have to be proved beyond ALL doubt, widdershins. It has to be proved beyond all REASONABLE doubt. I think this is possible. Lots of people do.

What I'm not entirely convinced of is whether everyone in the jury box has heard the evidence presented well...in a compelling and logical manner.

That's what I'm trying to do.

No, He didn't. But He did go to the cross.

And what happened after that is what we really need to examine.

If scholars and historians disagree with you, then you are wrong, end of story.  So, you are wrong, end of story.  But let's ignore that and get straight to the point.  Let's say you have successfully proved your false claim that the New Testament contains "eyewitness reports".  It very much does not.  This is wrong.  It is not true.  You are mistaken.  But let's say you're not.  Let's say you have successfully proved that these are the writings of eyewitnesses to the event.  Let's even take it one step further and say we are in a court of law, trying to prove these are the accurate events.

So, what do we have?  We have copies of copies of copies of the original.  In court that's called "hearsay" and is inadmissible.  But let's say that rule didn't apply to move on to our next problem.  All our witnesses are dead.  No witness, no case.  But let's say that even THAT isn't a problem and move on to witness credibility.  Anyone familiar with police work or the courtroom will tell you that eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable.  And these witnesses are claiming magical powers happened.  Water into wine, healing the sick, the dead rising from the grave, dogs and cats living together...even a crappy lawyer would get that testimony thrown out as unreliable.  Your dream "court case" would be thrown out 3 times before it even went to trial.

But let's ignore EVEN THAT.  Let's say that you've just convinced me that the NT contains eyewitness accounts, you've convinced me that Jesus really walked the earth, you've convinced me that your timeline is correct.  Let's say that EVERYTHING you are claiming, I now believe.  Now you just have one more simple little task.  A tiny thing, really.  You just have to convince me that they were telling the truth.  That shouldn't be too hard.  Except, there is one, specific way that I'm going to need you to convince me of that.  You need to convince me, beyond a reasonable doubt, that magic is real.  If you can't do that then everything else you might convince me of adds up to nothing more than that this fairy tale is the same one told 2,000 years ago.  So, cast a magic spell for me.  Teach me how to do it.  Pray to Jesus, have him come down and cast a magic spell for me.  Something unmistakable.  Pick a children's hospital.  Heal every child in the terminal ward.  You get Jesus to do that and I'll do whatever it says.  It would make the news, so I don't even need to see it.  Every kid in the ward dying of cancer suddenly gets up, feeling fine with a full head of hair and goes home happy and healthy that very day.  That would do it.  So you could do that, or you could just give me an excuse.  "God has nothing to prove to you" seems to be a popular one.  But, if that's true, why are you here?  Aren't you hear speaking for God?  And aren't you trying to prove something to me?  So that one won't work.  How about, "You have to have faith?"  Says who?  Thomas, a man who walked with Jesus, knew him personally AND SAW that he had come back from the dead STILL didn't believe.  But Jesus didn't tell Thomas that he just had to have faith it was true, he gave Thomas the evidence he needed.  Why should I have MORE faith than someone who actually KNEW Jesus?  Unless you're telling me that Thomas is now condemned to Hell for all eternity for not having enough faith then I demand AT LEAST the evidence he got.  Or you could use the excuse, "You wouldn't listen anyway".  No, I wouldn't, but only because you have no proof to offer, so there is nothing to "listen" to.  How about, "Cast not your pearls before the swine"?  That means, "I got nothing".

I'm sure you could come up with plenty of other one-liners to explain away why it's perfectly reasonable for you to ask me to believe in magic, but utterly unreasonable for me to ask you to prove magic is real.  What you CANNOT come up with is proof magic is real.  And any argument you give really doesn't matter one damned bit in light of that.  If you want me to believe that magic is real, show me some magic.  If you can't do that then you can argue about how all the actual historians in the world got the history wrong and you, biased as you may be, JUST HAPPENED to find the "truth" which JUST HAPPENED to be exactly what you wanted to hear but, for some reason, is in no way "biased" all you want.  If you can't give me a very good reason to believe in magic, well, I'm not 8, so I'm not going to just buy it.

[Baruch]

Interesting.

Now, let's consider this. IF, and I'm just saying IF for the moment, God and Satan both exist, wouldn't it be reasonable for Satan to establish counterfeit religions to lead people astray? To mock and copy the true religion? Would that be a reasonable strategy for Satan to adopt in his opposition to God?

I mean, the Allies set up all sorts of fictitious operations designed to deceive the Germans into believing that D-Day was going to happen at Calais, right?

This is one of several points where the Christians prove innumerate ... y'all are Roman pagans, not monotheists.  Jews and Muslims have you beat (sort of).

[Baruch]

Now, we're finally getting somewhere. If Jesus really existed, if he wrote a book, if we had that original autograph...it wouldn't matter to you.

And why is that, Baruch?

Dropping other shoe ... if he claimed to work miracles, or claimed to the be the Messiah, he would be lying.  That doesn't help his, or your position.  Ultimately you have to put faith in an institutional authority, and old book, or your "faith" without evidence in a personal savior.  Thus the many forms of Christianity.  Not that I am opposed to that ... though some here are.  But I know Santa Claus when I see him ;-)

[reasonist]

It's really quite simple if one looks at it objectively. There are only two possibilities: either the whole premise of Judaism and christianity is true and the scriptures are authentic or the religion is a racket and scam and a human fantasy.

If it is a racket, people like Carson are wasting their entire life buying into lies and believing in nothingness.

If it is true, than that makes it even worse. Then the flock worships and submits to a cruel monster and most proficient mass murderer of all time! It would be more logical to build a shrine for Ted Bundy and worship Charles Manson!

Since Randy Carson insists that all of the ancient scriptures are true eyewitness accounts and everything claimed is true, he and billions of others are kneeling in front of a deity that values human life less than donkeys. A miserable, vindictive, jealous and humorless serial killer! I can't bring myself doing that, and obviously the posters here cannot either; we set the bar somewhat higher, handing out love and admiration to the one(s) who deserve it.
But it shows us what religion has accomplished over time. In any other aspect of life or public discourse this would be classified insanity. Religion however has accomplished almost complete immunity from criticism. The pious believe that submission to a monster (or to emptyness) is not only justified but noble and morally superior!